


Reset Theory

by maknaeline



Category: LOONA (Korea Band), 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Blood Magic, Blood and Gore, Discussion Of Murder, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Hitsuzen, Horror, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Protective Siblings, Red String of Fate, Spectacularly Bad Romantic Decisions, Stranger Things x Inception x Wings x HYYH, Vomiting, Witches, exactly what it sounds like, none of the abuse occurs between the members, potential body horror, repeated deaths
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 11:08:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12580420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maknaeline/pseuds/maknaeline
Summary: No one ever really dies, except when they do. Seokjin has died two thousand, two hundred and sixty six times to learn to dance, and he still stumbles. But that's before the witches - and that is before he decides what he must sacrifice.It is time for the dancing to begin - but he is not the only dancer on the floor with everything at stake.[Taehyung turns back time. Seokjin does it for his own reasons. They pay the price together.]





	Reset Theory

**Author's Note:**

> I'll just say it: the prologue is a fucking mess. If you can make sense of it, I'll be impressed. It's a buildup to whatever comes next, so it's deliberately vague - and we all know that both Stranger Things and Inception are a mess on their own without the added drama of HYYH/Wings. Have fun, I guess.
> 
>  
> 
> [Song for this fic.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEIeb85DkCs)

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

\- Demian, Herman Hesse

 

**prologue.**

 

Day 2964: I should tell Taehyung I love him.

Day 2965: I was too late.

 

*

 

Warmth, Seokjin thinks. Taehyung's skin is too hot, blazing as he trails fingers underneath his shirt.

"Hey, hyung?" Taehyung says, cherry lips on his like a brand on his skin, scalding his jaw as he slides his tongue out. "Maybe you're a Monday, too."

 _What does that mean?_ He's so tired. So very tired. "Taehyung -"

"It's time to wake up, fancypants," Taehyung finishes. His unkempt hair hides his expressive eyes. "Before it's too late."

 

*

 

He blinks, and shakes his head. Seokjin's feet propel him automatically to open the door.

Hoseok and Jimin are snuggling on the couch. Jungkook makes a noise of desperation at Jin when he walks in, from where he's trapped in between the two of them, uncomfortably trying to scramble out of their grasp.

"Stop manhandling the baby," Seokjin reprimands, even as his fingers reach for his camera. Hoseok makes a noncommittal noise and flips him off, and his hand coming loose is all Jungkook needs to break free, all hands for a split second before he makes a mad dash out of the door, no doubt beelining for the fridge downstairs.

"Mm, hyung, join us, we were just about to start the orgy," Jimin mumbles. He rolls over lazily, and Seokjin notes that Hoseok looks away, unwilling to acknowledge the smooth bare arms grazing his face, the slip of a nipple - really, Jimin has no sense of decency. He suspects it's on purpose.

Seokjin suspects a lot of things, but he keeps them to himself. It's best, in the long run.

"It's time to go downstairs, actually," he tells them. "Joonie is getting the truck started -"

"We're going to the ocean!" Taehyung yells from downstairs, and Jin casts a look over his shoulder, that lasts a second too long when Taehyung looks up at him in the process, large, dark eyes glinting with mischief. Jungkook squeals when the older boy drags him into a headlock, and Taehyung holds two fingers up to salute Jin.

"Take a picture, hyung!" he calls. "It'll last longer!"

Jin rolls his eyes, letting the door shut behind him as he walks up to the wardrobe, opening it and getting his jacket. Jackets. Plural. Taehyung wasn't wearing anything but his old hoodie - Jin wasn't blind.

"Don't wanna go," Jimin whines, and burrows into the couch just as he turns to them. Hoseok whacks at him half-heartedly, but it's clear they're far too comfortable to bother being enthusiastic right now.

"Do I have to drag you both out of bed?" Seokjin says. "Or bring up the mess you two made last week -"

"We're not playing Uno again, hyung, we can't mess up the deck -" Hoseok starts.

"That's not the kind of action I was promised," Jimin says, pouting. He's obviously still very out of it - early morning meds do that to him, sometimes - but it's always amusing to see Hoseok sputter in response. "Fine, I'm going, I'm going. Hyung, did you take the extra reel?"

Seokjin scoffs. "What do you take me for?" He closes the wardrobe and pockets the key. It's an old, rusty one, the size of the piano keys at school. The curtains at the window flutter, and Hoseok hops off the couch to pull them closed, shivering as the wind hits his face.

"You're going to get a cold one of these days, hyung," he says.

"Better me, than one of you," Jin replies wryly. "Not like I have regular school anymore."

"Can we not talk about school on the _last_ day of vacation?" Jimin complains, finally stretching and getting up. "Although, I suppose it's a permanent vacation for Jin-hyung after this, huh?"

Seokjin smiles softly, studying his profile in the small windowpane, fixing his collar. "It'll be your turn soon."

"If I live that long," Jimin says flippantly, and gets his jacket. Hoseok freezes, like he always does when Jimin talks - like that - and Jin lets him go, open the door casually and skip down the stairs.

Hoseok looks like someone ran over his puppy. Deservedly so, Seokjin supposes.

Seokjin supposes a lot of things.

He knows of borders, certainties. The fact that Jimin can make a room light up by walking in, the way Yoongi looks at Jungkook, the pretty cranes Taehyung leaves on his windowsill, a waste of paper - but also that Jungkook will never understand, that Taehyung doesn't know he keeps his origami in his desk, that Jimin will always want to dance, with blood in his mouth and running on nothing but air.

He also knows nothing, nothing is permanent.

"Hyung," Hoseok says quietly. "Can we stop on the way there for Jimin's meds? He forgot to bring them."

"Of course," he replies. _It's for the best._ One day they'll all be apart, and what then? What happens when Jimin stops running?

 _You sound like your father,_ his conscience mocks, and he ignores it. He leaves the door open as he goes downstairs, making sure to skip that creaky step. Taehyung and Jungkook are arguing in the truck, over Yoongi's dry remarks and Namjoon's loud interruptions. What date is it, again? September, September 7th - the calendar is on the dresser. He turns to go towards it, his hand catching on the flowers, and the vase spills over -

 

*

 

"You look nice," his date tells him. "Super nice! Thanks for -"

A smatter of entrails on the pavement. Seokjin jerks back as the blood hits his face, suspended in the air for a second and it is _not_ her face. It is not her face he sees, the _thing_ that rises from her corpse, his corpse, Jungkook, _Taehyung!_   and looks at him with no face, none at all.

Seokjin wakes up.

Seokjin really fucking hates Mondays. _Lucid dreaming is an out-of-body experience on a work day, even if you called off work,_ he writes in his diary, after a minute of scrambling for the book on the bedside table. _Literally. I dreamt I was floating. ~~I dreamt Taehyung was with me.~~  I thought I could control it.  ~~I thought it would at least be sexier.~~_

 

*

 

Mondays, Seokjin decides, are a torture device aimed specifically at millennials.

He flails towards the bedside table to get his phone and put the alarm on snooze. His voice feels like he hasn't used it for a long time, underwater or parched. somewhere in between. There is a -

Seokjin wakes up again. He reaches to turns off the alarm clock on the bedside table. There is a lighter next to the melted candle. He draws his hand back like it's scalding him. Something is very wrong.

Doesn't he have a date today?

Twenty-eight, his brain says. This is the twenty-eighth time.

He gets out of bed. Wrong, wrong, wrong. You're going the wrong way.

Seokjin turns around stiffly, and takes the lighter away from the table deliberately, slipping it into his pocket. The melted candle looks far less dangerous now.

A cat meows outside, and he stops worrying. He'll investigate later. The power in the entire block has been out since last night, so it can't be that he's missed a delivery notification or anything like that -

His heart hurts. There's a phone call he has to take. The room swims in front of him and he remembers the pills in the bathroom. He didn't take any extras -

The ocean is calm. Seokjin is asleep.

Then he isn't.

_How long?_

Taehyung floats in the water before him. "How long, Jin-hyung?" He startles back, and his head hits the seat. There is blood in the water, the waves pink and blue. His life flashes backwards like a negative reel. Twenty-nine times. Twenty-nine hundred times. Twenty-nine -

 

*

 

Seokjin _hates_ Mondays. He _hates_ them.

"Don't," Jungkook advises him. "Monday is how you begin."

And apparently Jungkook is here now. He's sitting on a tiny bed - a hospital bed, his feet barely touching the water. They're in the middle of a large, still pond, silent and without ripples. Jin is in front of him, on an equally tiny bed.

"This makes no sense," he says. "I'm pretty sure I'm not - why are we here?"

"It's the only way!" Jungkook says. Bounces, really, but his cheeks are sunken, like his eyes. He can tell this is some bastardization of Yoongi's apartment, the canvas propped up in the corner, the piano - "You don't understand it yet, do you?"

"Understand what? What is this?" This is lucid dreaming, it's not -

Jungkook raises a finger to his lips. "It's coming, hyung."

"What?" Jin says - and then he sees it, the light, the shadow of the wings that towers above -

 

*

 

There's a blood-red apple on the white table. Seokjin watches Jimin lean over it, and swallow it whole. His voice cracks as he yells, but Jimin doesn't hear him, choking on blood that pours from his throat and floods the room. Hoseok is there, standing knee-deep, watching Jimin retch and cry and reach out, until the blood turns into the ocean.

"Jimin!" he screams. "Come back - come out! Get that out of him!" Yoongi is there, and he's screaming too - too far away to reach, to understand -

But Jimin retches further, and the ocean pulls him under - and he has Taehyung's face now.

 

*

 

Seokjin wakes up, and fishes out his new diary. He writes "Day 2966."

He calls Namjoon. "You won't believe what just happened."

"What is it, hyung?" Namjoon asks patiently.

"I think -" Seokjin swallows, and adjusts the vase before it tips over on the dresser. "It's going to be a Tuesday kind of day. You're bringing the truck over, right?"

Namjoon snorts. "Whatever that means. No problem."

Seokjin looks out of the window, the curtains fluttering in the breeze. The newspaper cuttings on his table flutter too, under the weight of the inkwell. "Yes. No problem."

He lied. It still feels like Monday. It still feels like the start.

He has no idea when it will end. But at least they go to the ocean today - 

 

*

 

"Abraxas," Jungkook says. "His name is Abraxas."

He looks worse, this time, eyes bloodshot. The canvas in the corner is scrawled over, the painted face shifting each time Seokjin blinks. "I don't understand."

"It's okay, hyung," he says, and his smile clenches at Seokjin's heart - a terrible, small thing that has no place to belong on his face, wherever this is - this is _wrong_.

"Don't cry," he murmurs. "I'll cry too, if you do. Tell Yoongi-hyung," - and Seokjin goes under, a hundred thousand memories filtering through him every second.

 

*

 

He blinks, and shakes his head. Seokjin's feet propel him automatically to open the door.

Hoseok and Jimin are snuggling on the couch. Seokjin blinks again.

"Stop manhandling each other," he reprimands, even as his fingers reach for his camera. Hoseok makes a noncommittal noise and flips him off.

"Mm, hyung, join us, we were just about to start the orgy," Jimin mumbles. He rolls over lazily, and Seokjin notes that Hoseok looks away, unwilling to acknowledge the smooth bare arms grazing his face, the slip of a nipple - really, Jimin has no sense of decency. He suspects it's on purpose.

Seokjin suspects a lot of things, but he keeps them to himself. It's best, in the long run.

"It's time to go downstairs, actually," he tells them. "Joonie is getting the truck started -"

"We're going to the ocean!" Taehyung yells from downstairs, and Jin casts a look over his shoulder, that lasts a second too long when Taehyung looks up at him in the process, large, dark eyes glinting with mischief.

"Take a picture, hyung!" he calls. "It'll last longer!"

Jin rolls his eyes, letting the door shut behind him as he walks up to the wardrobe, opening it and getting his jacket. Jackets. Plural. Taehyung wasn't wearing anything but his old hoodie - Jin wasn't blind.

"Don't wanna go," Jimin whines, and burrows into the couch just as he turns to them. Hoseok whacks at him half-heartedly, but it's clear they're far too comfortable to bother being enthusiastic right now.

"Do I have to drag you both out of bed?" Seokjin says. "Or bring up the mess you two made last week -"

"We're not playing Uno again, hyung, we can't mess up the deck -" Hoseok starts.

"That's not the kind of action I was promised," Jimin says, pouting. He's obviously still very out of it - early morning meds do that to him, sometimes - but it's always amusing to see Hoseok sputter in response. "Fine, I'm going, I'm going. Hyung, did you take the extra reel?"

Seokjin scoffs. "What do you take me for?" He closes the wardrobe and pockets the key. It's an old, rusty one, the size of the piano keys at school. The curtains at the window flutter, and Hoseok hops off the couch to pull them closed, shivering as the wind hits his face.

"You're going to get a cold one of these days, hyung," he says.

"Better me, than one of you," Jin replies wryly. "Not like I have regular school anymore."

"Can we not talk about school on the  _last_  day of vacation?" Jimin complains, finally stretching and getting up. "Although, I suppose it's a permanent vacation for Jin-hyung after this, huh?"

Seokjin smiles softly, studying his profile in the reflection of the small windowpane, fixing his collar. "It'll be your turn soon."

"If I live that long," Jimin says flippantly, and gets his jacket. Hoseok freezes, like he always does when Jimin talks - like that - and Jin lets him go, open the door casually and skip down the stairs.

Hoseok looks like someone ran over his puppy. Deservedly so, Seokjin supposes.

Seokjin supposes a lot of things.

He knows of borders, certainties. The fact that Jimin can make a room light up by walking in, the pretty cranes Taehyung leaves on his windowsill, a waste of paper - but also that Taehyung doesn't know he keeps his origami in his desk, that Jimin will always want to dance, with blood in his mouth and running on nothing but air.

He also knows nothing, nothing is permanent.

"Hyung," Hoseok says quietly. "Can we stop on the way there for Jimin's meds? He forgot to bring them."

"Of course," he replies.  _It's for the best._  One day they'll all be apart, and what then? What happens when Jimin stops running?

 _You sound like your father,_  his conscience mocks, and he ignores it.

He leaves the door open as he goes downstairs, making sure to skip that creaky step. Taehyung is cracking lewd jokes in the truck, over Yoongi's dry remarks and Namjoon's loud interruptions. What date is it, again? September 7th - the calendar is on the dresser. He turns to go towards it, his hand catching on the flowers, and the vase spills over -

Seokjin freezes, and turns. Something is missing.

"Come on, hyung," Jimin says. "Don't be such a slowpoke."

"Yeah, Namjoon-ah has to catch those at the beach today, and we can't have him catching you instead," Hoseok cackles, finally coming down the stairs. "I can't believe he's still playing that shitty game."

"Hey, I play that shitty game too!"

Seokjin looks down at the vase. Six flowers. Six. There were supposed to be six flowers.

There are five.

"Hyung?" Hoseok says hesitantly. "Are you coming?"

Seokjin turns to them. "Where's Jungkook?"

Jimin blinks. "What?"

No. No. This is wrong. Seokjin runs out of the door, towards the truck. Namjoon jumps in his seat when Seokjin slams his hand on the window. "Hyung, Jesus, what?"

"Jungkook. Where is he?"

"What? What are you talking about?" Hoseok says, catching up to him. Seokjin shakes, his blood chilling in his veins between the wind and the looks on everyone's faces. 

"Yoongi?" he tries. "Is he at your place still?"

Yoongi blinks, and Seokjin's world falls apart, in three terrible words, in the blankness of his face when he asks "Who is that?"

 

*

 

"You're dead," he says dully. They're back on the beds, facing each other, but the water level is higher. Jungkook's feet are on the bed now.

"I've been dead," Jungkook says, equally bright. His eyes are alight, unlike the last time, and he has a lighter in his hand. "I'm renewed, because I don't exist. What will you do, hyung? Will you become a Monday, again?"

Seokjin's full body shudder escapes his notice. "Do I have a choice?"

"No, I don't suppose you do. You could let us die."

"No!" he snaps. "Anything but that."

"Don't you understand, hyung?" Jungkook says. "You already might as well have. Twenty nine hundred times."

Seokjin screams.

 

*

 

"Hyung? Jin-hyung? Baby? Wake up, please, wake up-"

He's in his room, and Taehyung is kissing his face, nuzzling him - and he gets up, flustered. "Taehyung!" Cherry Blossom Ending is playing on the radio, like Taehyung has actually set this up instead of being a horrible, miraculous coincidence that deals a deathblow to Seokjin's unfortunately romantic heart.

"You weren't breathing!" he says, and smothers him again, kissing his face, his nose, and Seokjin barely manages to shove him away before he gets the edge of his lips. Taehyung looks spectacularly pleased with himself, and Seokjin can only take so much more before he implodes from self-consciousness.

"I'm going to sue you for harassment. Somnophilia. Freak." Taehyung pays him no mind, _smiling_ at him. _The audacity..._

 Right. Ocean trip. Better things to think about other than what's in his pants, and Taehyung's hands slowly creeping towards it. He bats his hands away. "Taehyung, not now."

"Is that you agreeing to a _later?_ "This boy is insufferable. Seokjin has no idea what he sees in him. It's not like the constant, consistent teasing _gets_ anywhere - not for the lack of trying on Taehyung's part, but Seokjin is not like _that_  - Taehyung is still young and -

_Snap._

He hears the sound before he realizes that it's the door shutting. The lights are flickering, on-off-on, and Taehyung is staring tensely. It's the ass-crack of dawn - four a.m.

Why are the lights on?

"Taehyung?" he tries.

Taehyung looks back at him. "I'm sorry," he says, and - literally - melts into the floor, like liquid splashing into the wooden panels.

It takes him a moment, before he screams again, his voice cracking as the shadow grows larger, unnatural against the light, the wall cracking and bubbling like potion in a witch's cauldron. The radio goes static.

"Jin-hyung?" it says, and the walls stop crumbling. "Jin-hyung, I'm sorry, but I have to find her."

"What do you _mean?!_ " he screams. _"What does any of this mean?!"_

"I'm sorry, hyung," Taehyung says miserably, his voice still audible, even over the crackling. "Jungkook, too - it's all my fault -" 

 

* 

 

"Hyung? You're not - are you okay?" Yoongi is leaning over him now, and Seokjin doesn't know whether he wants to laugh or cry. Taehyung is gone from the truck - he suspects, from their memories too, and he must -

"Yoongi-yah," he says. "Do you remember the first person you fell in love with?"

"Yeah," Yoongi replies, nonplussed. "He's dead, hyung. My piano hand." He holds up the broken fingers as proof, still wrapped in bandages.

Seokjin nods. "Do you remember who you played it for?"

Yoongi hesitates, eyes widening. "I don't -"

He turns to Namjoon. "Did I tell you it felt like a Tuesday?"

"Yes?" Namjoon replies. "What's this about, hyung?"

"I think," Seokjin says, and looks down, and enunciates clearly. "It's time to unravel."

 

*

 

"That was clever," the girl in purple chirps. "Unraveling, that is. Not a lot of people would make that choice."

Seokjin stands in front of them, three girls sitting in a circle, looking at him with mismatched eyes. "Who are you?"

"We're Finders," the girl in red says. "We find our own, not yours."

"We could help, but for a price. Some lives you have given away will be ours," the brunette - the purple girl adds.

Seokjin begins to laugh. "How many do you want?"

"Nine lives for each," the girl in blue states. "Flat rate."

"I can offer you twice that," he tells them. "Where is my brother?"

"Lost," she says sadly. "I am Jinsoul. It is a terrible price you must pay, then, for he might be beyond us."

"But not beyond you," the brunette offers kindly. "Provided you pay anything the universe seeks in balance."

Seokjin nods, and they beckon him forward, into the middle of the summoning circle - the summoning _spiral_ \- and it twists for him.

"What do you seek?" the girl in blue asks again.

"My _brothers_ ," he says. Quieter, still, "My _life_."

"Double, double, toil and trouble," the girl in red sings. "You will begin again."

 

*

 

"What do you remember?" Namjoon asks, voice tense.

Seokjin throws his head back and stares at the hood of the truck, a thousand memories in his head. "Enough, I think, to start a war."

Namjoon snorts. "Because the last war with God ended so _well_." He presses down on the accelerator, slapping Seokjin's hand away from the gear. "No, hyung, I highly doubt you're in any state to drive anything, let alone a car right now."

Seokjin lets it go. "I have...nine lives," he murmurs. "Nine lives to fix everything."

"A cat would call that a bargain." Namjoon says. He presses the pedal faster, and Seokjin wonders -

"Do you think we'll find them?" he asks, hesitant for the first time in a long time.

Namjoon looks at him, shakes his head and goes back to the steering wheel. "Why not? Stranger things have happened."

Seokjin looks out of the car, lighter clasped tightly in his hand. Somehow, the statement inspires very little confidence.

 

*

 

Day 2967: Taehyung is alive.

Day 2968: I wish he wasn't. It would be easier. I'm sorry.

**Author's Note:**

> haha


End file.
